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Non-duality and awakeningTue, 14 Nov 2017 18:40:52 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngliberationdiarieshttps://liberationdiaries.com
You can’t find peace, you can only be peacehttps://liberationdiaries.com/2017/11/14/you-cant-find-peace-you-can-only-be-peace/
https://liberationdiaries.com/2017/11/14/you-cant-find-peace-you-can-only-be-peace/#respondTue, 14 Nov 2017 09:55:21 +0000http://liberationdiaries.com/2017/11/14/you-cant-find-peace-you-can-only-be-peace/]]>There is a peace that comes from having a better story, from thoughts that tell of success and happiness. But this is a temporary peace. Throughout our day unhappy thoughts will make an appearance, perhaps accompanied by unpleasant feelings. If we’re convinced these are wrong, that they shouldn’t be here then we find ourselves in conflict. We’re always trying to get away from them, either by distracting our attention or by using some method or technique to try and change them. What a battle! What about when we’re tired, when we just don’t have the energy any more? Then they all come flooding back and we find ourselves lost in them.

There’s an irony to looking for peace. The idea that we have to keep on the move, hunting it like prey through a forest of dangerous thoughts and emotions. We can’t find peace like this. It’s not in a place or a mind state, you won’t discover it on holiday or in a monastery or temple. It’s not created by meditation or chanting. We find it when we stop fighting.

Peace doesn’t come from not having ugly thoughts, it comes from realising: it’s just a thought, and letting it be. It’s not approval or denial, we’re not embracing or pushing away, we’re simply observing: this is a thought, or this is a memory, or this is a worry about the future. Of course we don’t say these words to ourselves but that’s what is seen.

And we have to do that because this human experience includes the unpleasant. It’s not good enough to say, ‘This is happening to no one’ or ‘There is no pleasant or unpleasant, it’s all good’, that’s still fighting talk. That’s trying to use the concept of the absolute to overwrite what we’re experiencing right now. It doesn’t work, we can spend years speaking like this and pushing away everything unpleasant with these sorts of platitudes, but they’ll always keep coming back because that’s the nature of this life.

Do not adjust your set, life has beautiful happy moments and painful distressing ones. That’s the way it is and nonduality or spiritual awakening won’t give you an escape from that. The you that runs from these things is just another aspect of the sense of a separate me that’s engaged in this struggle called living. Peace is not to be found through the door marked Spiritual Awakening.

Peace is when we stop fighting. It’s not the peace of a peaceful thought, it’s the peace that realises thoughts are simply thoughts. Mind weather is like weather, some days it just rains. It’s not a problem that it rains, in fact it would be a problem if it never did. We don’t (I hope) shake our fist at the sky and curse the rain or the wind. It’s raining, so what? That’s what weather does, it changes. And that’s what thoughts and feelings do, they change.

Sometimes, if the weather is terrible you have no choice but to wait it out, to wait for it to pass. Feelings are just the same. If it’s too much, it’s too much, but it’s not wrong. When we don’t fight it, when we stay with it and just patiently be present, we find we can bear it, moment by moment. Cry if you want, curl up in a ball if you want, but stay present. If someone you love is sick and you visit them in hospital you don’t go into their room and try and avoid them or distract yourself. You show some love by being with them, waiting and staying present. This is how we have to love ourselves too. Not in an indulgent way, but in a genuinely kind way by staying with the pain and the upset. Seeing it, recognising it and knowing it will pass. It’s here now and it will pass.

Some things hurt, they just hurt, that’s the way it is. These are sensitive forms and they feel a whole range of things. We don’t get to pick and choose only the nice ones, we get all of them. Peace is being present, seeing and not fighting. Peace is letting be, listening to our heart and acting when we have to act, staying still when it’s time to be still. We watch all of the ‘have to’ and ‘haven’t to’ thoughts, the ‘shoulds’ and ‘shouldn’ts’ the ‘meants’ and ‘not meants’ come and go and we stay present.

Then peace is simple, it’s just seeing this, not fighting, accepting, simply being. This is as it is, actions arise or not, things change quickly or slowly. Our refuge is in right now. It’s the only refuge. How is it right now? And stay lovingly with that.

Filed under: self awareness Tagged: emotions, feelings, non-duality, nonduality, presence, thoughts]]>https://liberationdiaries.com/2017/11/14/you-cant-find-peace-you-can-only-be-peace/feed/0liberationdiaryCan thoughts be true?https://liberationdiaries.com/2017/10/29/can-thoughts-be-true/
https://liberationdiaries.com/2017/10/29/can-thoughts-be-true/#respondSun, 29 Oct 2017 12:52:29 +0000http://liberationdiaries.com/?p=754]]>Can a thought ever be true? In other words, does a thought ever depict reality clearly? Until we’ve investigated this question and see it with clarity we might struggle with aspects of nondual inquiry. In fact, we might struggle with most of it!

But of course if I present an answer here, I’m creating another viewpoint, aren’t I? So rather than expect me to answer the question, take what I’m about to say as a pointer. A pointer is simply an invitation to look, that’s all. In any moment everything around us can serve as pointers, as invitations to look and see clearly how it is. The fact that we spend much of our time not looking but resting in thoughts, beliefs and assumptions about what is around us, is apparent in the fixed views and sense of self these give rise to and support.

Okay, let me backtrack. Back to original question, can a thought depict or reflect that which appears with sufficient accuracy to be considered true? Let’s take an example. Imagine you show me a postcard of the Grand Canyon. Never one to avoid stating the obvious you say, ‘Look, it’s the Grand Canyon.’

‘No, it’s a postcard of the Grand Canyon.’ I reply, in equal measure stunning and irritating you with my apparent pedantry.

‘Yes’, you acknowledge, ‘it’s a postcard, but it depicts the Grand Canyon. That’s what the Grand Canyon looks like.’

Ignoring your beleaguered expression, I reply, ‘No, that’s what the Grand Canyon looked like when the image was taken.’

Now, it may seem like a small distinction but it’s a crucial one. You could line up a thousand postcards of the Grand Canyon and none of them will really show the true Grand Canyon. They will only ever show what the Grand Canyon looked like – past tense. Since the photos were taken animals have moved, plants grown and changed, the weather has altered, the light is different, there will be small changes to the physical terrain and so on. Even if the image is one second old, that which it depicts has changed.

It’s important to recognise that thought works the same way. The process of reflecting some thing in thought is based on an old image, old data. It’s not an accurate depiction of how things are. It can’t be. To see how things are, we have to set aside thought and look, i.e. to engage with how it is right now, free from ‘thoughts about…’

Again if you think this is just pedantry, you might not be seeing the point(er) that’s being made. The tendency of attention to attach to thought as the basis for knowing truth is the fundamental foundation for the sense of self, world view and conditioning. Until we recognise this tendency and can set aside that which arises in thought as simply a thought, a feeling as a feeling, a sensation as a sensation, we are living in a world of appearances rather than seeing the way it is.

There is nothing wrong with thought, feeling or sensation, we’re not judging, denying or suppressing them, all we’re doing is recognising their nature. In doing so we return attention to the present, how it is right now, and as thoughts, feelings and sensations arise, we don’t attach to these, we see them arise and disappear. We need not engage them or we may choose to but we don’t attach to any of them. They are what they are. When this is seen, seeing is awake.

Filed under: nonduality Tagged: Grand Canyon, nonduality, postcards, realising truth, Thought]]>https://liberationdiaries.com/2017/10/29/can-thoughts-be-true/feed/0liberationdiaryUnbornhttps://liberationdiaries.com/2017/10/21/unborn/
https://liberationdiaries.com/2017/10/21/unborn/#respondSat, 21 Oct 2017 11:39:52 +0000http://liberationdiaries.com/?p=746]]>Try not to think about a destination. Don’t let yourself imagine endings or stages. Avoid the traps of examples, ideals or stereotypes. Instead imagine yourself a pioneer, exploring virgin territory. There’s no map, no travel journal to guide you. Every day brings something new and you wake with no expectation of how your journey will unfold. Much more important than words of wisdom from other explorers is your attention to the here and now. The path you leave behind soon vanishes and can’t be discerned; there is no path ahead other than the one you make with each step you take.

There are rules or guidelines to any exploration, aren’t there? Attention is the most important and courage, but there are some basic do’s and don’ts designed to keep us safe. The process or path of nondual inquiry is no different. Common sense can reveal most of them so let’s not labour the point here. Because there is much to be seen. That’s the reward. It’s not any specific thing, every turn, every new vista is different and it is the experiencing of this that connects our heart to this journey; this process.

Even before the sense of self drops away glimpses of a selfless experiencing might arise. With no sense of self, although we can still interact and fall back into role, into the content of this apparent arising, the ability to do so alters over time. Perhaps it fades or we lose the drive to, but gradually the Unborn becomes more than the born.

At first this shows up as a disinterest in things that held fascination for us before. Personal drives, ideas of becoming, goals and desires; these lose their shine, their glamour. They seem ordinary and unappealing. This can be challenging if our lives had centred on such things before and we had strong identifications associated with them. We can feel adrift from the familiar patterns of our previous life.

But what value was there in these things? Did they ever make anyone truly happy or fulfilled? It may feel disquieting to watch them go, as they slip away, we may even grieve for some of these things or for the person we felt ourselves to be. That’s natural.

But whilst ‘we’ haven’t gained anything there is now something there wasn’t before. It has many labels but please don’t attach to these or the baggage each one holds. In my tradition it is referred to by what it is not, as it defies any description. It is said to be: the unborn, uncreated, unformed, unconditioned. And even to say ‘it is’ is going too far, it isn’t manifest.

But there is the direct experiencing of this, not as someone having an experience but of experiencing happening to no one. You couldn’t call it bliss or joy or happiness, these words don’t and can’t describe it. Would you feel comfortable calling it the direct experience of God or the Divine? I’m not sure I do but you’re welcome to if you like.

But it’s always there, closer than your next breath. That which knows, the beingness of this moment divests itself of all identifications like slipping easily out of a robe and as it falls away, there is no thing, no being, the unborn.

How could words travel to this? You can’t remember it any more than, as someone said to me, you can’t remember awareness. It can’t be thought so it can’t be framed in language but we don’t need to, we just allow; divest; un-be; let go into it dissolving in it like sugar in tea but instantly. Instant nothing; not nothing as a concept or a belief, just simply not in the frame of reference where things and happenings arise. Not here, nowhere.

I feel like I’m dissolving in it, a little each day. It has an impact on the conditioning that came with the arising of a sense of self. Perhaps it’s not accurate to say it corrodes it but there’s nothing now to sustain it and so it follows the nature of all things and fades away, little by little like an iceberg melting back into the sea, gradually losing its shape and its features.

I should say something about love. The only definition I ever came across that made sense when describing love is that it’s the complete absence of a sense of separation between the apparent subject and object. That sounds a bit cold, I know but of course the experience of it is anything but. The opening of the heart, which I’ve always related to as an aperture rather than a thing, allows for the direct experience of no inner/no outer, no me/no you. So this is very much related to the Unborn. In this sense it is very much the experience of love. It is love.

It’s not an empty, cold experience, it couldn’t be fuller. It’s abundant, it’s overwhelming. With no safe shell to refract experiencing through it is direct allness, boundariless, and there’s no ‘going to’ and ‘coming back from’ it, it’s right here. Always. It is our true nature; our true nature is that ‘we’ aren’t. This never was born, it only appeared as.

It can be called the ground of all, and I don’t mind that phrase but it’s not connected to, nor is that which appears an emanation although I can see why some people default back to that notion. The closest we could get is to consider the process of induction. A magnet doesn’t create electricity, it doesn’t come from the magnet (and vice versa of course) but even though there isn’t a direct connection one requires the other.

That’s a poor and inaccurate analogy but it’s about as close as we can get. But really what good are words? What need is there for words? This can be experienced directly. So every teaching worthy of the name points the way to the realisation of this; leads us away from this limited, tawdry identification and towards the real. Maybe you think your life isn’t tawdry but then Venus looks bright until you see the sunrise doesn’t it? The morning star, Lucifer, only reflects light, it doesn’t create it. And a poor, dim, tiny reflection it is compared with the source, Sol.

So why don’t I talk about it more? Well because it’s not easy to put into words, it can’t be expressed clearly, so all we can really do is point to the way of realisation, to inquiry, to presence or mindfulness as part of the process of seeing clearly and losing the attachments that prevent us from seeing.

Would I or anyone else even bother to guide, to meet, to discuss, to explore if this wasn’t worth it? Do you think we’d waste our time if the inexpressible unborn was just another experience to be had alongside everything else? But of course not everyone does. Some see this, they realise truth and they realise it’s beyond words and they don’t feel inclined to do more than be. At the other extreme there are those who get so attached to the words they come up with they’ll spend their days arguing about it on social media.

But don’t be put off by either of these, they’re just the underbrush you have to hack your way through. Don’t get caught in it and don’t let it stop you. Keep going, you’re on the right path. You’ve always been on the right path, once you start to see the lessons you’ve learned from it. And where you end up is right here, right now. There is no destination.

Filed under: nonduality Tagged: Andrew White, nibbana, nonduality, realisation, truth, Unborn, uncreated]]>https://liberationdiaries.com/2017/10/21/unborn/feed/0liberationdiaryvenus3How not to be scared of horror movieshttps://liberationdiaries.com/2017/10/18/how-not-to-be-scared-of-horror-movies/
https://liberationdiaries.com/2017/10/18/how-not-to-be-scared-of-horror-movies/#respondWed, 18 Oct 2017 10:21:26 +0000http://liberationdiaries.com/2017/10/18/how-not-to-be-scared-of-horror-movies/]]>I love a good story. There’s something magical about the way an author can develop a character and make us, the reader, care about them; perhaps even fall in love them. But of course we’re all stories to each other aren’t we? Your story of someone is unique to you. It’s based on your interactions, your experiences, your observations, perhaps flavoured with a few second-hand tales. Each person’s story of another is different, as each person’s story of you will be different.

So perhaps it’s not so surprising that the characters in a story can come to life for us so easily. We’re all story tellers in a sense, and story telling is a co-creative process. I guess the trouble really starts when we all too easily lose sight of the fact it is just that; a story. When we believe deeply in our own fabrications we form fixed views and opinions, at times even to the exclusion of new information that contradicts what we hold to be true.

Keeping to a more flexible approach, one that realises a view is simply a view, a thought nothing more than a thought is tricky, it requires us to be mindfully present when thought tries to tell a compelling story and not get caught up into believing it.

Not that thought is a problem per se; we’re not demonising it. It’s a useful faculty when used properly. But we need to recognise its nature and its limitations if we’re to balance our thoughts with all of the other elements that make up this human experience. If we’re slavishly devoted to thought as being more important than the experiencing of the moment without the colouration of views then we’re always seeing life through a lens, a distorted lens at that.

Of course it’s one thing to say it, it’s another to practise it. It’s all too easy for us to lose sight of the reality of a situation as we get caught up in the content of the story telling mind. Way back in the seventies there was a famous horror movie called The Exorcist. I doubt it would shock anyone now but at the time it caused quite a stir. My sister went with some friends to see it and at one famous moment, when the afflicted girl’s head spins round she came close to fainting and had to be helped to leave the cinema. She wasn’t alone, in many screenings medical staff were on hand to help people overcome with the terror of it.

A few years later my father had a chance to see it. Admittedly he was more of a fan of the Marx Brothers than horror movies but when the famous scene appeared on the screen his reaction was to burst out laughing. I don’t know, maybe the experience of serving through a war gave him a different view of what horror really is. But I suspect that along with this he didn’t lose perspective quite so easily based on what appears on a small screen. He grew up in world without television, it only entered his life as an adult so he knew that what appeared on the screen was a production, there was no magic to it as far as he was concerned.

When we’re able to realise this, when we keep in mind that just beyond the edge of the frame there’s a team of people looking after the sound, the cinematography, the lighting, the make up, then the illusion of the story breaks apart. But where’s the fun in that? We want to believe. We love stories, so we suspend our disbelief and allow ourselves to become immersed. We shut out reality in preference to a pleasant fiction; or at least an engaging one.

Exactly the same thing happens with the thought stories we tell ourselves. Our well formed views, our cherished memories, our beliefs, our theories. We like them too much to really question them deeply. They make up our approach to life, they’re a convenient tool for not having to see in every moment how it is. We don’t need to, we’ve already made up our mind. Sure, it’s fiction, but it’s easy.

Perhaps you think I’m being too harsh. Can all thoughts really be wrong? Well, it might be more accurate to say they can’t be right. They are at best a reductive, partial, dated reflection based on a single biased viewpoint, how’s that?

In fact the more closely you look at thought, the more you realise how unimportant it really is. Thought is really about commentary, it isn’t about knowing. We don’t know through thought, we comment on knowing. Not sure? Well, have a look. Look closely how the knowing of anything arises. You’ll see, with a little practise that the knowing precedes the thought ‘about’, the latter serving only to comment on or verbalise what has already been seen.

In fact for the most part we can set aside the verbal part completely and simply allow the knowing to be present, it’s actually a much faster way to apprehend being non-linear. It takes practice though, and patience, which is not a particularly common virtue these days.

When we look in this way, taking the sting out of troubling thoughts is much like taking the horror out of a horror movie. We take a step back and we look from a broader perspective. In the same way we would consider the cameraman, the director, the sound guy, the lighting person (spark, I think), and everyone else that makes up a shot of which we only get to see a tiny part, we look at the mechanics of a thought story to see the assumptions, beliefs and views on which it rests. Are we certain of each one? Are we prepared to question each part rather than holding on tightly? Can we accept uncertainty?

If we can then we’re starting to see clearly. This is uncertain. Life is most certainly uncertain. Are you where you are now as the result of implementing some carefully laid plan? Has your life unfolded exactly as you intended it to? I doubt it; I don’t know anyone’s that has. We might prefer to take refuge in predictability but it’s a false refuge. Life will prove us wrong time and again. As someone pointed out to me once, thoughts of the future are like playing the slot machines. Time after time we’re wrong but we keep doing it, over and over. Then maybe one in fifty times it pays out and we react with: ‘Aha! I knew it. I knew that was going to happen.’ We so easily forget every other time we were nowhere close.

And of course this wouldn’t be a problem if our thoughts of the future were nice, pleasant ones but so often they’re not. We suffer for them. We worry, we get stressed, we get upset. ‘How will I deal with this? What will happen when this comes to pass?’ We just can’t imagine how we’ll cope so we get upset.

But ‘you’ won’t face it. There is no fixed you that’s travelling through space and time experiencing all of this. ‘You’ are nothing more than a changing set of thoughts and feelings and sensations following patterns and habits. It’ll be a whole new ‘you’ that faces any future event even if it should come to pass.

So when we see this, we bring our attention back to the present. We can ask: how is it right now? Can I bear this, right now? And the answer is yes, isn’t it? This present moment is bearable. That thought of the future might not be, but it’s just a thought. Keep attention here, now, on this. This is the only place that actions happen, the only place that’s real.

The future might be wonderful or it might not but it’s uncertain, and we just have to live with that. We can’t know it, so we stay with what we can; this experiencing in the present, seeing this clearly. And this forms a habit of mindfulness, a skilful habit that keeps attention here and not wandering off. What we begin to find is layers and aspects of this present moment that we hadn’t noticed before. The more we tune in, the more we see. And it is worth seeing. The experiencing of the present, free from thought is many times more valuable than any thought about it. So yes, literally stop and smell the roses, the fresh coffee, see the cloud shapes, the sparkle of rain, hear the dogs and the birds and the people and just let go. Be. It’s that simple.

Filed under: self awareness Tagged: Andrew White, horror, movies, newcastle, nonduality, North East, UK]]>https://liberationdiaries.com/2017/10/18/how-not-to-be-scared-of-horror-movies/feed/0liberationdiaryRealisationhttps://liberationdiaries.com/2017/09/25/realisation-2/
https://liberationdiaries.com/2017/09/25/realisation-2/#commentsMon, 25 Sep 2017 21:27:11 +0000http://liberationdiaries.wordpress.com/?p=706]]>Last time I said something about what awakening is but not so much about the how. This question came up at the last Nonduality Up North meeting and so I thought I’d share some of that discussion. If you were there you’ll probably recognise quite a lot of what I’m about to say.

The first thing to point out, and as far as optimism goes this is as good as it’s going to get, is that the ‘how’ is fiendishly simple. That’s the good news. If it wasn’t simple then this poor soul would never have awoken. It’s not that I’m thick, but there were always those cleverer than me at school and college and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

So, it’s simple. Simple is good. But the more eagle-eyed and the more suspicious amongst you will have already taken note that simple does not mean easy. There’s always a catch, isn’t there?

To undertake this inquiry, as we’ve already noted, is to go nowhere. There isn’t a thing to learn, a truth to uncover, a secret to unearth. It doesn’t work like that, not at all. This inquiry works on an entirely different axis. It is more akin to dismantling or unlearning… no I’m not going to use that word, forget unlearning. It’s more like a demolition of the foundations on which the world, your world and it’s most important inhabitant, you, rests. The subsequent collapse is all down to nature, as life works it’s magic and pulls your world apart.

So why hasn’t it happened yet? You’ve been reading all this stuff, maybe meditating? God knows you try to be mindful. So why hasn’t it happened? Well, because you missed something; an important ingredient. There is a difference between a thought and realisation.

In fact if you took that one simple pointer, with no more being said, that in itself would be enough, so the more determined of you feel free to stop reading at this point and go away to chew on that. It really is the crux of this whole thing.

So why don’t you realise? Well maybe it just hasn’t sunk in yet. Maybe you just need a little more time to process this because it usually does take time. Or maybe it’s because of something else. This is going to sound negative but I’m going to say it because it’s true. Most people don’t want to awaken, they really just want a better dream.

Don’t get me wrong, I get it. It’s perfectly understandable. I wanted a better dream, we all do. But it isn’t going to happen. It can’t. Old age sickness and death, our three good friends or perhaps better to say allies, are not to be denied. They won’t wait, they won’t go away. As the Buddhists say, and I’ve quoted this before: ‘All that is mine, beloved and pleasing, will become otherwise, will become separated from me.’

All.

Perhaps humanity as a whole is not awakened is because we’re not ready to. We’re not quite there yet. So those that do are what you might call the ‘early risers’. And that only happens when someone pursues their inquiry with so much energy they break apart the illusion, or so much determination they quietly chip away at it bit by bit without ever stopping because they just won’t stop, or because the dream is so shit they really can’t stand it and it fuels their passion to see and be free.

Of course it’s really freedom ‘for’ no one. No one awakens. There are no enlightened beings. It’s freedom ‘from’, awakening ‘from’ and frankly ‘enlightenment’ is just a bullshit word best left back in the nineteenth century where it was incorrectly translated to begin with.

But if you you’re determined to do this, if you fall into one of the three categories above or more likely a combination of some or all of them, then it will happen. It can’t not. Just don’t create any expectations around timescales. That’ll end up being a drag, an anchor as will any other expectation, so best cut them free at the start. It takes as long as it takes.

No blog would be complete without an analogy so here we go; analogy time. There are a lot of people who believe they are engaged in a nondual inquiry but who miss the thought/realisation distinction. Escaping the paradigm of self view or world view and its component parts is about as easy as escaping the earth’s gravitational field. You need a bloody big rocket and a lot of fuel. Frankly a lot of people are floating around in hot air balloons wondering why it isn’t happening for them.

You can’t escape the earth’s gravity in a hot air balloon. The view might be nice, your inquiry might yield a few inspirational insights from way up there but sooner or later you’re going to land with nothing but those memories to cling to.

This takes something more. It needs more. Because space, where a rocket is headed, is nothing. It holds nothing, it promises nothing, it will give you nothing and you leave behind everything. Still fancy it? Much better to take a trip in a balloon, don’t you think? Clearly most people do, though I doubt they ever admit it to themselves. It’s best to be honest, you’ll find. This inquiry won’t settle for partial, nearly, almost or a little bit. It requires All. That’s the fuel. All.

So assuming you’re all in, let’s have a closer look at realisation versus thought. Here’s how it works or at least one example of how it works. When the Buddha said everything is change, we can on a purely intellectual level agree, can’t we? We can notice that yes, things change over time. Isn’t that nice? That’s the thought.

Here’s the realisation: all form is not ‘form’ but movement; patterns of movement, from the smallest to the largest. Patterns emerge, they change, they disintegrate. There are no nouns, only verbs. A tree is not a thing, it is ‘treeing’; a collection of processes in constant movement, never still, never separate, an apparent pattern amongst a myriad of patterns that perception separates out and labels, but which defy all labels as they are never still, and which will continuously flow into one another in a never ending dance of apparent becoming. From the smallest to the largest, on any scale and in every way there is movement and motion and change. Based on old information thought attempts to see these patterns, to project ‘what next’ but misses and fails; not that that would ever stop us attaching to such thoughts and worrying about them.

There is no time, beyond the concept of it. As you notice the hands of the clock tick round you’re not seeing time you’re noticing change. All is change. There is no now for there to be a future and a past from. There is simply this ever-changing moment that is ALL. All that we are is a collection of brief patterns and processes amongst and alongside all of the patterns and processes flowing along together, and any categorisation of any part as distinct and separate is arbitrary and fundamentally wrong. It’s only our attachment to thought that keeps us from seeing this clearly.

When you absolutely live in a world that contains no forms, nothing fixed, no boundaries and no separation you will have realised Change. Not that there’ll be a ‘you’ to have realised it, because by that stage such a belief will have long ago fallen by the wayside.

As close as my poor writing skills and limited seeing can render it, that in brief is the realisation of change. It places this human experience in a very different context from the one where there is a me, living a life, within fairly predictable parameters. Such a delusion is false but even when this is seen clearly it can be remembered well enough for us to interact and even get back into role on a day-to-day basis to order our coffee and croissant as we wait for the bus. Don’t worry, no one will see that you see. No one will notice you’re no one.

So when a guide points out that in this process of inquiry you lose everything (every ‘thing’) you get what is meant by that. For this to go from being a thought of change to our lived experience on every level is the journey from this being a thought to a realisation. It’s about taking that thought and working with; using it, noticing how it applies, keeping it present, mindfully, until it filters into everything we see. Until it is how we see, until we have that clarity. Until we’re no longer fooled by ‘things’; by how things appear.

Now where within that would you attach to possessions? Why would you struggle for the big job, the great car, the perfect house, the ideal life? You might not throw all of these away if they’re already present but the relationship to them will change. They won’t mean anything. Nothing will. How can you attach to a process? How can you grab hold of a flow? How can you put a boundary around turbulence?

Okay, that’s an example; just one. You can start anywhere, at any point and drill away letting it fill you, washing away old beliefs and concepts. You have nothing to lose. Well, you have everything to lose, but you’re going to lose it anyway, so why not? But ask if you’re not clear, that’s what I’m here for.

Filed under: nonduality Tagged: awakening, hot air balloon, realisation, space, thoughts]]>https://liberationdiaries.com/2017/09/25/realisation-2/feed/1liberationdiaryrealisationThe nature of awakeninghttps://liberationdiaries.com/2017/09/09/the-nature-of-awakening/
https://liberationdiaries.com/2017/09/09/the-nature-of-awakening/#respondSat, 09 Sep 2017 12:30:29 +0000http://liberationdiaries.wordpress.com/2017/09/09/the-nature-of-awakening/]]>I thought it might be helpful to clear up some misunderstandings by taking a little time to say what awakening actually is. First let me say that you are not what you think you are and that awakening is not what you think it is.

With that proviso in place, awakening, like the realisation that leads to it is surprisingly simple. In fact the single largest obstacle anyone engaged in the inquiry to know or realise truth faces is the staggering simplicity of it. It is true to say that every step you take to find truth in effect leads you away from it because it is the nature of the beingness that was, is and ever will be present; thus was already there at the beginning.

However, as that simple rendition of truth might be unhelpful allow me to enlarge on one of the main aspects of the challenge that keeps you from realising this simple fact. Actually I think an analogy might be useful here so bear with me. Several months ago my partner’s mother called us in a mildly distressed state to say that her Carbon Monoxide detector had been going off and she didn’t know what to do. We offered some immediate advice and then as soon as the shops were open the next day, bought and delivered to her a new one.

It was only when we inspected the supposedly faulty unit and found it to be in perfect working order that we began to realise what had happened. The sound she had heard hadn’t been a CO detector going off, it had been the by-product of a low battery in one of her hearing aids. She’d looked externally for the cause of a sound that was present in the very mechanism she was using to detect sound.

So what does that mean for us? Well, whilst we’re busy looking through books, watching Youtube videos, attending satsangs hoping to find that which finally reveals to us the truth, we never stop to consider that with which we are seeking to apprehend it. And that, in short is the problem.

It’s a question of perception. Now I know that word has many differing shades of interpretation applied to it so let me be quite clear in defining how I’m using it here. Perception is the process by which experiences get turned into things. [Remembering of course that there are ontological arguments that can trump this assertion from a number of perspectives, bear with me.]

Unless you are absolutely clear and have studied this process you will struggle to see anything else clearly. Let me state it again: ‘things’ are a product of the process of perception, as it turns sensory input into objects within and part of a world-view.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not taking a philosophical position on whether the ‘out there’ is really out there, that’s not the point of this immediate inquiry so don’t get side-tracked into that. What I am stating and what I encourage you to explore (remembering never to accept any untested assertion), is that from your point of view, light comes in and a world is made (ditto for other senses). You create your world.

Every person you meet is your creation, everything you perceive is your creation. You are your creation. Albeit you’re not doing any of this consciously, but still this is the process that is taking place for you every minute of every day.

As you sit in a room with others, listening to one person speak, every listener has created their own version of that person happening in live time and – none of them are true – at least not in the absolute sense. They are conditionally true as an experience taking place but none of them are absolutely true, they are a creation of the process of perception. You might well want to stop and have a think about that for a few moments.

Okay, if you’ve had time to explore that for yourself, and I hope you have, then we’re ready to move on. If you’re feeling confused and unsure at this point it’s probably because you wandered off into the realms of speculation about whether the out there is out there, and not only did I suggest you don’t waste time with that, I should point out that’s exactly the sort of idea chasing that has led to much of your confusion i.e. if you recognise the [at this stage] unknowable when you see it this will go more quickly.

So, moving on. What happens next (remembering to verify this with your own inquiry) is that you now have a nice, fairly neat world-view full of things, most of which behave in a relatively predictable manner. However, there is an added layer of complexity to this world-view because not only is it full of ‘things’ but in creating them you have established relationships to them, opinions about them, views have become attached to them and this has led away from that which we might label as the simply physical into a whole other arena of things that we might label respectively as views, beliefs, opinions and identifications; the latter being by far the most troublesome.

It’s time for another analogy and as the one I’m about to use has been done many times before, in many different ways, I’m sure you’ll recognise it. Suppose for example you’re reading this on a tablet (assuming you’ve decided to save the planet by not printing it out). That tablet has a casing, a screen, an on/off switch and volume control, a battery and a frightening array of miniature electronic components and wires. Now if you took them all apart and laid them out on the floor would there be anything left? Would there be any ‘essence of tablet’?

Essentially that which we label a tablet is the combination of these elements when they’re brought together in a certain way, yes?

So, back to the second sentence of this blog – what is a human being? Whilst we might operate under the assumption that a human being has, aside from a body and senses, thoughts, feelings, opinions, views, tendencies, habits, beliefs and identifications and the awareness of all of these. If we similarly laid all of the parts of a human being out side by side, would we find some ‘essence of human’ that has all of these things? Do you believe that? If you do, are you certain? Are you willing to explore and question why you believe that, and then question the assumptions that that belief rests upon?

For those who have answered no you have a simpler task. You see, as long as the thoughts (ideas, beliefs… et al) remain in a nice, clear, organised, unchallenged pattern then as awareness arises in relation to (equally one might say through or as) each of these there is a recognisable familiarity to them, a comforting sense of me. I am this gender, this age, this nationality, this social class, this… whatever. I like this, I don’t like that, I believe this, I’m good at that etc.

In seeking truth you mistakenly start your inquiry looking at all of things within your world-view and wondering if you’ve got them right. Perhaps you’re even prepared to sacrifice one or two to replace them with more updated and accurate thoughts or beliefs. But you miss the crucial point. None of them are true. All of them are creations made real by the unnoticed process of perception. The hidden process that has been running since before recorded memory, developing patterns that in time turned into more complex patterns, that turned into things. And none of it is real, you made all of it.

Now I know that sounds an awful lot like solipsism but it’s not. We’re not questioning the ‘out there’, we’re not asserting that you alone exist and nothing is real, not quite. We’re simply noticing that your world is your creation.

I could get fully side tracked here myself and go into a long spiel about how this works and how things really are in more detail but I’m going to stay on task and I suggest you do too.

This is about awakening and what it is, so allow me to explain. As your process of inquiry unfolds, if you bring sufficient time and intensity to it, your views, thoughts, ideas, beliefs and those pesky identifications begin to loosen. As you start to see clearly, these neat and tidy thought patterns or habits become frayed, unstable, amorphous. But the sense of self, the sense that there’s actually a real ‘me’ is another one of those views, so as they, and your world view begin to shift and fragment, not only will you feel anything from mildly depressed to confused and insecure, at some point in this process the self-view that created the sense of a real ‘me’ becomes unsustainable and falls apart.

Now if you’re going through this process with intensity and drive that might be a dramatic shift or pop. If you’re taking it more slowly it might simply degrade and fall away over a much longer period of time, or a combination of the two.

To what extent the sense of a separate ‘me’ dissolves depends on the inquiry, its intensity, its degree etc. So you might be left with no sense of self at all or you might be left with a sense of self that you recognise but no longer believe in. There’s no right or wrong, better or worse scenario, all are part of this spectrum of awakening.

On that note, this process of awakening really began with the start of your inquiry, not with the loss of a sense of self, and it goes on long after.

I could go on and say more but I expect you might be a bit fatigued at reading a blog this long by now so I’ll wrap up.

So there you have it. Leaving all mystical mumbo jumbo aside that’s awakening. It arises through seeing clearly how it is by which I mean seeing clearly how we see and the processes that comprise experiencing or knowing and the creation of a world-view complete with a sense of self. Feel free to use your own labels, mine serve me but why should you limit yourself to them? This is your inquiry after all. Good luck with it.

Filed under: nonduality Tagged: awakening, beingness, perception, solipsism]]>https://liberationdiaries.com/2017/09/09/the-nature-of-awakening/feed/0liberationdiaryTrusting in lifehttps://liberationdiaries.com/2017/08/12/trusting-in-life/
https://liberationdiaries.com/2017/08/12/trusting-in-life/#respondSat, 12 Aug 2017 10:04:45 +0000http://liberationdiaries.wordpress.com/2017/08/12/trusting-in-life/]]>Trusting in life is the hardest thing to do. It’s one thing to sit on Facebook, when you’re in the mood for it and get into the flow of all the spiritual comments and reflections, to like and share the quotes and pictures of serene lakes and mountains. But when life seems unfair, when you hate your job, when the money’s running out, when someone you care about is sick or has been hurt, what about then? Still trust life?

It’s not so easy is it? And that’s kind of a problem, because you can only meditate so much, you can only do so many classes and groups and therapies. Sooner or later it comes back to the day job, the relationships, the content of this human experience with its ups and downs, and we all know there’s a fair few downs.

So what do we do? Well the problem started before all this, a long time ago in a mind-set far, far away. The problem starts with choice.

As soon as we use that word we run into difficulties. It appears that choices are made, and it appears that those choices effectively create the circumstances of our life, so it follows that we better be damn careful about the choices we make if we want to avoid our lives becoming a sea of the proverbial.

But how can we make the right choices? We don’t know how things will turn out. A good choice now might lead to a bad result later. In fact we can look back at lots of examples in our own lives where that’s exactly what happened.

Choice. It’s a problem isn’t it? But what if we’re looking at this the wrong way? The whole question of choice rests on there being a separate me that can do the choosing. It doesn’t matter how you twist it or what memes you’ve read, choice implies a chooser.

Except that there is no chooser, is there? If you’ve been following anything about non-duality and awakening at all, you’ll have run across this one. There might be an appearance of a separate me, it might seem that way, but the whole essence of the word nonduality is that there is ‘not two’. No subject. No ‘me’. No chooser.

Now here we have a catch 22 situation. Turns out, if you can let go enough to trust in life, if you’re less engaged worrying about the outcome of how things appear, you’re operating from a position of less self-view. But you need to have a bit less investment in self-view to get there in the first place.

Tricky isn’t it? But ask yourself this: is where you are right now the result of some carefully laid and skilfully executed plan? Have all the best things in your life come about because you worked it all out in advance? Did you ever find yourself going through something tough only to find when it was all over you ended up in a better situation?

The simple fact is we don’t know how things will turn out. We never know. All we can ever do is let the choices that arise come from the place of seeing things as clearly as we can. But really every choice you’ve ever made or ever will make reflects exactly where you are right at that moment.

No choice you’ve ever made was wrong. The all just reflect you – not you as a separate self – you as a dynamic flow of processes and conditioning and senses and thoughts and breath and life and movement. Yes, there’s no separate self in this but there an amazing symphony of happenings, that we can label ‘you’ (as long as we remember it’s never fixed and never separate and therefore kind of not real).

So you can take life as seriously as you like, make every choice after weighty deliberation, but it won’t help. In fact the opposite will happen because that position is one of being more fully enamoured by appearances, by words, by thoughts, by conditioning, by the media, by all sorts of things. It might appear that the smart thing to do is work it all out, and perhaps on a few occasions that can seem to help but usually when it does work it’s because at some subtle level we’ve started to listen a bit more closely to our heart and a bit less closely to the content of thought.

In fact the more we can set aside our head and listen to our heart, the more likely we are to act from a place that recognises no separation; that recognises truth.

That may never turn out better for you materially. The content of your life might never be improved by that. But something else will happen. Your heart will start to open a little bit because you’re starting to use it. And when it does you’ll find joy creeping in. You’ll notice a small glow of warmth, of light deep down inside like the pilot light in a boiler (giving away my age here).

So then when sh…trouble happens, when things go wrong, part of you knows you have acted and will act from the heart; true to the heart. And you can trust that because it doesn’t know, but it doesn’t need to, it is simply never separated and that’s how it speaks.

So when you trust that, it feels right. And even when things appear to be outwardly less than ideal that sense of it not being really wrong doesn’t go away. Yeah, things will still go to poo sometimes but poo happens. This life is impermanent, it’s unpredictable. We don’t know, no one does.

But somehow things get where they’re meant to. It all works out, not as we thought, but that’s okay. Of course there’s still a little voice of ‘me’ that wants to control it all, but that little voice is full of it and always has been. It’s not even worth trying to shut it out, it’s just another piece of this doing what it does. So, we see it and we move on. Not attaching. And little by little we do start to trust life. We start to trust our heart. And wherever you get to, if you take a moment to stop and look and it seems okay, then it’s working. Who knows how. Doesn’t matter.

Filed under: self awareness Tagged: non-duality, nonduality, self view, trust]]>https://liberationdiaries.com/2017/08/12/trusting-in-life/feed/0liberationdiaryFear and Looking in Newcastlehttps://liberationdiaries.com/2017/07/29/fear-and-looking-in-newcastle/
https://liberationdiaries.com/2017/07/29/fear-and-looking-in-newcastle/#respondSat, 29 Jul 2017 12:30:09 +0000http://liberationdiaries.wordpress.com/?p=676]]>I’m afraid. I’ve always been afraid. At least as long as I can remember. Perhaps there was a time in the deep innocence of babyhood when I felt safe, but I suspect not. I just can’t quite believe it.

It’s not the fear of a specific thing, it’s a deep primal fear; a fear for my own safety; my survival. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. Maybe we all feel that way on some level, who am I to know?

But it’s there: a tension; a stance; a readiness. In fact when I was younger I used to seek the oblivion of inebriation to escape it. It seems unbelievable now but I would place myself in vulnerable positions, almost – well not almost – actually inviting danger, risking my own destruction, just to be free from the fear of it. I understand why an animal would chew off a trapped leg. Others might find such a course of action surprising, even sickening, but I get it. I would too.

But alcohol is a temporary solution and no matter how much I drank the fear would come back usually in the most unpleasant of ways; smiling through the dread of having to wake up once again. We all get battle weary in the end I suppose. So a more permanent solution was required. The trouble with that scenario is at some point the very fear you’re seeking to escape switches over and becomes the fear that keeps you alive. The fear that keeps you from making that final slice, taking that extra card of tablets or doing anything to completely remove the risk of chance.

But somehow, without really knowing how, one day follows another. You get busy, life becomes more challenging in the mundanity of trying to get by and a small part of your fear gets channeled in more positive ways, keeping you conscientious at work for fear of dismissal, keeping you kind and polite to others for fear of rejection or criticism. Of course it also holds you back from getting too close, you don’t really want to let anyone in, whilst not appearing to push them too far away.

In time it’s easy to forget the fear is there but it never leaves. It might hide as the background anxiety of a busy life full of mortgages and children, careers and pastimes. Alcohol still lurks like a shadow within a shadow, watching, knowing its time will come. No one can stay busy forever and all these distractions will one day cease or diminish long enough for the fear to resurface. Or maybe the fear of losing it all will push it up to the level of consciousness. Either way it plays a waiting game its sure it can’t lose.

But I’ve always been resourceful. I didn’t entirely waste my time on distraction, trying to fill a hole as impossibly big as the stars. I sought, at least peripherally, a refuge. Like the Buddha of old I’d seen the fourth sight, the holy men and women who leave it all behind to take up robes and a different path. Could that work? Why not, after all, what is there to fear in a monastery?

But all refuges are illusory, nothing more than mirages invested with a desperate hope. The desert stretches on, unconcerned.

There are side stories to this main theme but who would believe them? I really don’t care if people do but in the interests of telling the tale properly I’ll share them in brief, but not more.

I walked in death. Several locations a number of times. I’ve seen those sleepers: soldiers dragging their wounded in a cavern, apparently unconcerned that their uniforms don’t match, still looking for the ‘enemy’. I’ve seen the forlorn and despairing on their tropical island, sitting, staring, because there’s nothing else to do and no way to get out. I’ve seen some better places, but I’ve seen much worse ones too. You think death is a way out? You wouldn’t if you’d seen what I’ve seen. Maybe that’s why I was shown. There’s always a reason to it, at least in hindsight.

So. No refuge. No escape. Now what? What else can be done? Several weeks of grey depression gave way to a small but well forged resolve. If I couldn’t be safe, if I couldn’t get out then all that I could do was try to figure this out; figure out this life, this place, this human experience. Try to see it clearly. It was the only path left, so I took it, not in any great hope or expectation of end or result.

Once the decision was made it was a surprisingly easy one. Months of looking followed, setting aside everything that I knew, every assumption and starting again from scratch. What is this? What could really be seen? Could anything be known? How was it known? What did it rest on? If it wasn’t on direct experience then it was discarded; a thought, nothing more. In this looking facts become enemies, knowledge becomes an anchor. Seeing opened vistas of not-knowing, ineffable, unconceived.

Deeper and deeper looking until all that was seen was an ever shifting, constantly moving moment comprising nothing in a beautiful dance, beginningless and endless, unknowable, unfathomable; a dance with no dancers, a movement from nowhere to elsewhere of no thing and no one… and, at the last as looking saw clearly no ‘one’ something indescribable happened. No ‘one’. No-one. Empty. Centreless emptiness. EMPTY.

Confusion. Yes, lots of confusion. You might think that this – oh just insert whatever phrase you like, to a greater or lesser extent I detest them all – would resolve all confusion, but the opposite was the case. There was no I to be confused. There was no knowing. There was no world in which to live and no one living there. No one awakened. No awakening happened. Use whatever words you like, none of them work, not this time, not for this.

That’s where this blog started five years ago. But before that it started with fear. And in case you’re wondering if the fear went away, it didn’t. The need to fix it did.

You can’t fix life. For all sorts of reasons: there’s no you to be fixed, there’s no life that’s broken, that’s just a position; a judgement and all positions are dualistic and therefore limited – truth is whole. This just is, actions appear to arise, results to follow – it’s not really cause and effect, all effects and causes coexist and cease to exist once you step back from that mode of perception.

But the more clearly we see, the more unbiased and unobstructed seeing becomes, the more that actions and responses flow from that clarity, rather than the conditioning that forms the basis for the personhood that was formerly believed to be ‘me’. Attuned action, we might say. It’s not a fix, don’t think of it that way. But it does flow, and as long as we’re not in that flow but are unborn of the flow, then we don’t find any contention.

Okay, that last bit might not make a lot of sense to some, or maybe it does, but I’m not really writing this as a way to explain things. I’m simply stating what’s seen and trying to do it as honestly as possible. Because that’s what’s seen, that’s how it appears. Is this truth? A view of truth? A version of truth? A rendering of truth? Can anything be true or not true? In the end what’s left? Except truth.

Filed under: self awareness Tagged: awakening, fear, looking, newcastle, refuge]]>https://liberationdiaries.com/2017/07/29/fear-and-looking-in-newcastle/feed/0liberationdiaryfearBeautiful patternshttps://liberationdiaries.com/2017/07/01/beautiful-patterns/
https://liberationdiaries.com/2017/07/01/beautiful-patterns/#respondSat, 01 Jul 2017 09:55:12 +0000http://liberationdiaries.wordpress.com/?p=668]]>I don’t know if I’m ready to write this yet, but it’s been a while so I thought I’d have a go and see what comes out. I should say sorry at the start because I’m going to lapse into ‘Buddhism mode’ to share this, simply because it’s the tools that Buddhism offers that led me to it and some of the terms of Buddhism that seem most useful to relate it.

Do I need to include the standard disclaimers? Dunno, but here they are in brief: this is not a post about ‘the way things are’, it’s an invitation to look, that’s all. Don’t expect to find truth in these words, it can’t be found in information only in realisation (they’re not the same but ask if you’re unsure why). I’m not even going to attempt to avoid personal or possessive pronouns but that doesn’t mean I have a sense of self – I don’t (get the irony?) – it just means I’m not clever enough to write without using them.

Okay, so here’s the Buddhism bit first, which was the source of my inquiry; the seam I was mining you might say. The tenth of the Ten Fetters is ignorance, which basically means ignorance of the way things are i.e. you’re still not quite seeing it. Which is strange in a way because if you’ve seen through and released the previous nine you’ve really seen quite a lot, so I was intrigued a little at this in a, ‘what am I missing?’ kind of way.

Interestingly (to me at least) the first step of the 12 stages of dependent origination state that ignorance supports or conditions kammic formations, so I thought maybe that was a good place to start. So what are kammic formations? Well, I’m not a Buddhist scholar, so apologies to those who are and who can reel off chapter and verse on this. I went at it armed only with my own looking (note to ‘self’:must write a post on Looking) and it comes down to some fairly simple observations but with profound implications.

Things that arise, anything that arises in any way, has the potential to create patterns; perhaps they all do. Once something happens then the next thing and the next thing emerge into being conditioned by the first and then the subsequent and so on. So although not neat or tidy, what we might loosely call patterns emerge. That seems to be the way things play out. Interestingly we see this because we’re of this nature too.

As soon as sensation happens, eliciting response, from our earliest experiencing, patterns begin to form: what the eye lights upon, what it does not see; what the ear picks up and the things it will not notice; the thoughts that pop up and those not considered. Beyond that, how each and every sensation is received, and then what judgments arise. Following this, what other thoughts emerge and on and on, patterns form like the patterns we see in nature, simply because we are nature; we arise as all of this arises.

These patterns are our kammic formations. Who can say where they really start, I’ll leave that to the metaphysicians to speculate upon. But they condition what we sense, how we experience, how we receive and judge experiencing, how we respond and how we act. Unique to us, as each thing in nature is unique we yet follow patterns, that in another sense are the structures underlying the processes running along that make up this human experiencing. A beautiful, amazing, awe inspiring, messy set of processes flowing alongside everything else, no more separate than a wave is from the sea. The tendency for awareness to arise and shine through this, as it does through so many forms, is a reflection of the unconditioned. It is not ours it is ubiquitous and changeless; and at the end of the day just a label that we attach to that which never really was a separate phenomena.

So even this seeing is conditioned by these patterns. Every aspect of it from sensation right down to how it is expressed, a reflection of the beautiful patterns that have emerged as this human experiencing. Seeing this clearly brought with it first a sense of sadness; the realisation there really is nothing beneath this, this is it, just this, just patterns and processes with nothing underneath; subtly observable. But when you see how amazing, how complex, how beautifully this flower of humanity grows then that becomes tempered with a sense of awe, at nature, it’s just beyond words. As Jodie Foster’s character says in Contact, ‘No words… They should have sent a poet.’ With metta.

Filed under: nonduality, self awareness Tagged: dependent origination, kammic formations, karmic formations, nonduality, Paticca Samuppada, paticcasamuppada, patterns]]>https://liberationdiaries.com/2017/07/01/beautiful-patterns/feed/0liberationdiarygalacticIt’s already herehttps://liberationdiaries.com/2017/05/03/its-already-here/
https://liberationdiaries.com/2017/05/03/its-already-here/#respondWed, 03 May 2017 14:05:11 +0000http://liberationdiaries.wordpress.com/?p=664]]>One of the reasons I started this blog, one of the reasons I thought I’d try and help people with their inquiry into truth, is frustration. Seeking truth, wanting freedom, wanting to see what those who have awakened see can be a frustrating business. It becomes clear that whilst we might agree with the words, and the ideas they represent, there has to be more to it. Somehow that just isn’t enough.

Well, it can be quite frustrating to write about awakening as well. If you’re not gifted with poetic or literary abilities then the words that appear on the page end up looking clumsy and sometimes even contradictory. I’ve just been guilty of this myself, I replied to a Facebook post and then replied again and contradicted the first thing I said. Of course I could go back and delete it but I chose to try and explain what I meant instead. It may not work. As my son pointed out to me once, you can’t dig your way out of a hole.

I think one of the big challenges we face with our inquiry is our culture. We expect to be able to learn things. We go to school, to college or university and people tell us things and we learn them. So why doesn’t it work with awakening? Why can’t we just be told the truth and learn it?

I think on some level almost everyone who goes to hear an awakened teacher hopes that this time, they’ll hear the right words in the right way and that something will be transferred; the truth will finally be understood and they’ll achieve this much talked about awakening. Maybe they’ve even heard of others for whom this has happened. But what if it’s not like that? What if that’s a fundamental misunderstanding right there at the start and that what’s required is a radically different approach?

For a start, and you can’t state this often enough, you have to get that this is your inquiry. No one will, because no one can, give you this. And as this is your inquiry you have to validate and verify everything you find for yourself – no borrowing, no believing, no assuming. Set aside all words, all teachings except the things that you have found by your own inquiry to be true.

You have to actually look deeply and continuously at the nature of this human experience for yourself; you have to be 100% self-reliant. Your inquiry, your looking. So you need an attitude of knowing that no one can give you this. Don’t expect it of them. Don’t expect the truth in any book, any video, any lecture or satsang.

I’m not saying don’t go, by all means read, listen or whatever but don’t expect to find the truth. The very best you might hope for is a new tool to use. What do I mean by that? Well, that’s really what this process of inquiry is all about; using the teachings or ideas of others as tools, not as beliefs or as an end in themselves. So when the Buddha said there are 5 Khandas, he didn’t mean that’s literally how it is, he meant try looking from this perspective and see how it appears. Do you see anything new? Does it help you to break or shift an old paradigm? Does it reveal a pattern of thought you’ve based your world view on that’s not useful any more?

And it’s the same with all such teachings be they from Yoga, Buddhism, Advaita or a modern teacher. Just use it to look. Look for yourself.

Because the freedom is in seeing clearly. That’s what awakening is: seeing clearly. Seeing how it is, without any assumptions, ideas or beliefs, without any attachments or anything unrevealed or unexamined, without any viewpoint at all – just seeing happening.

And so when you realise this you realise that what is seen is constantly in motion. This is always changing; change is life, life is movement. There is no fixed ‘truth’, there never was. That’s why you can’t ‘find it’ or construct a path to it as Krishnamurti pointed out.

So this work is all inner work, noticing how we see things, how we receive them, what assumptions and beliefs we hold and then challenging these because they’re all imperfections in the lens. Anything not yet seen clearly is part of the lens and therefore conditions how we see.

There’s no real point in talking about what we find, you have to work on the looker. That’s the only way this happens. So who can tell you about you? No one can. You’re the only one who has access. It has to be your inquiry because it can’t be any other way.

Yes, it needs a lot of honesty, a certain determination, a bit of courage, a persistent effort – don’t worry about how long it takes, have no concern for that at all, set it right out of your mind. And it needs not a little compassion. There is no goal in this, it’s just seeing clearly, that’s all. If you make a goal out of it, if you fill your time having expectations about it, then you’re allowing yourself to be distracted.

So if you make the shift to realising this is your path, your inquiry, your work, then you have the opportunity to learn from everything, from every experience. Then you don’t have to go and sit at the feet of a teacher hoping they will bring truth to you. You’ll realise, as a friend of mine once said, it’s already here.